Volume V, Issue 9 February 29, 2016
Dear ,
Just home from Sunset Beach, basking in the memories of the wonderful weekend full of words, woven into beautiful stories, essays, and poems by these fine writers at this past weekend's writing retreat. (And what glorious weather we had! (Even if the sun did make us squint a
bit.) Speaking of words woven into writing, what better word of the week could there be this time around than word, to celebrate this week that begins with
the bonus day we only get once every four years?
And what better writer to feature this week than word master Richard Lederer? If you've never come across his work, you are in for a treat. After all, how can you not love a guy whose website is “verbivore.com”? (According to Lederer, “Carnivores eat meat; herbivores eat plants and vegetables; verbivores devour words.”) I hope you get as much of a kick out of his article about "the way we word" as I do.
Love and light, Maureen Upcoming WordPlay
SPRING WRITING RETREAT
(Writing as Renewal / Creating New Writing
Tools for a Writing Life)
Renew and delight yourself. The Spring Writing Retreat is an opportunity to create new pieces of writing and/or new possibilities for our lives. Enjoy various seasonal prompts; they elicit beautiful material that can
be shaped into essays, poems, stories, or articles. After a communal lunch, you’ll have private time which can be used to collage, work with a piece of writing from the morning, or play with a number of other writing prompts and methods. You’ll take home new ideas, new drafts, and new possibilities. $97 includes lunch and supplies.
WHERE: South Charlotte area. Details will be
provided upon registration.
WHEN: Saturday, April 2nd, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
COST: $97 (includes lunch and supplies)
TO REGISTER: To register securely online with your credit card, click here. To pay with a check via mail, email info@wordplaynow.com for instructions.
More WordPlay opportunities here. WordPlay Featured Writing
Old Words and Phrases
Remind Us of the Way We Word
by
Richard Lederer
About a month ago..., I illuminated old expressions that have become obsolete because of the inexorable march of technology. These phrases included don’t touch that dial, carbon copy, you sound like a broken record and hung out to dry. A bevy of readers
have asked me to shine light on more faded words and expressions, and I am happy to oblige:
Back in the olden days we had a lot of moxie. We’d put on our best bib and tucker and straighten up and fly right. Hubba-hubba! We’d cut a rug in some juke joint and then go necking and petting and smooching and spooning and billing and cooing and pitching woo in hot rods and jalopies in some passion pit
or lovers’ lane. Heavens to Betsy! Gee whillikers! Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat! Holy moley! We were in like Flynn and living the life of Riley, and even a regular guy couldn’t accuse us of being a knucklehead, a nincompoop or a pill. Not for all the tea in China!
Back in the olden days, life used to be swell, but when’s the last time anything was swell? Swell has gone the way of beehives, pageboys and
the D.A.; of spats, knickers, fedoras, poodle skirts, saddle shoes and pedal pushers. Oh, my aching back. Kilroy was here, but he isn’t anymore.
Like Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle and Kurt Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim, we have become unstuck in time. We wake up from what surely has been just a short nap, and before we can say, “I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!” or “This is a fine kettle of fish!” we
discover that the words we grew up with, the words that seemed omnipresent as oxygen, have vanished with scarcely a notice from our tongues and our pens and our keyboards.
WordPlay Now! Writing
Prompt This is WordPlay—so why not revel in the power and potential of one good word after another? This week, it's
"word."
PROMPT:
Set a timer for five minutes and make a list of words and phrases that were once a part of your life that have faded from your active vocabulary. Feel
free to use any of Lederer's choices from the above article, as well as slang, regional words, and names of products, toys, songs, etc.
Then choose one or more of them and weave them into a piece of writing in any genre, whether it's a paragraph of a novel you're working on, a poem, an essay about one of your grandparents, or something else that strikes your fancy
:). MAUREEN RYAN GRIFFIN, an award-winning poetry and nonfiction writer, is the author of Spinning Words into Gold, a Hands-On Guide to the Craft of Writing, a grief workbook entitled I Will Never Forget You, and two collections of poetry, This Scatter of Blossoms and When the Leaves Are in the Water. She believes, as author Julia Cameron says, "We are meant to midwife dreams for one another."
Maureen also believes that serious "word
work" requires serious WordPlay, as play is how we humans best learn—and perform. What she loves best is witnessing all the other dreams that come true for her clients along the way. Language, when used with intentionality and focus, is, after all, serious fuel for joy. Here's to yours! |
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